Most analytical instruments have been developed to be used as individual units for analysis of a sample. Some of these individual units have been combined to give more information from a single sample run. These combined individual units still work as separate analysis tools in that a full run or spectrum is taken for each unit, but the first unit can transfer separated components of the sample to the next unit. Effectively using multiple analytical instruments as a hyphenated instrument allows analysis of a sample based on multiple analytical principles with limited sample usage and instrument run time.
The present invention relates to improving the ability of a hyphenated instrument to analyze a sample benefiting from having the first instrument's analysis of the same sample. For example, a fast switching mechanism can be used as the interface between an ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) and a mass spectrometer (MS) such that the IMS spectrum obtained outside the vacuum chamber is converted into a timing diagram that controls the vacuum inlet's size dynamically during analysis of a neutral and/or charged chemical and/or biological species so that a smaller pumping system can be used.
Another object of the invention is to provide a method for gaining ion mobility information from the same sample component while the other information, such as, ion mass, is measured using an mass spectrometer; the parallel operation of ion mobility spectrometer and mass spectrometer configuration offers similar information as the prior art tandem ion mobility mass spectrometer.